Disquieting Complicities: The Double Binds of Anthropology, Advocacy, and Activism

In seeking to balance the demands of social science research with complex ethical and political commitments, ethnographers often find themselves caught in a series of double binds. This is particularly true when we are asked to testify in court on behalf of subjects criminalized by the state. I explore how these tensions play out in settings where right and wrong cannot be clearly distinguished in anthropological terms but are demanded in legal or political terms. I consider the narrative strategies that anthropologists employ in an effort to produce social-legal knowledge from our ethnographic research that would satisfy the demands of the court, while simultaneously deploying analytical strategies that can account for multiple realities and conflicting truths. I consider my own participation in these overlapping and often incommensurate projects through a particular ethnographic and legal case in which I was implicated as researcher and as a witness for the defense.